I’m an aspiring coffee snob. And I love the folks I meet in jail and prison.

They go together really well.

In 2007, working with men who couldn’t pass background checks at most jobs, I started a small coffee roasting business with some friends—in an old basement.

Turns out former meth cooks have “transferrable skills” when it comes to artisan coffee roasting. Most skills from the drug trade: weighing, packing, delivering, hustling.

And most of us—homes, businesses, churches—have a coffee addiction.

We want to be your dealer.

Underground Coffee is now proudly owned and operated by Fidalgo Coffee Roasters in Washington State’s Skagit Valley.

It’s transformed their entire business culture—today a quarter of their workforce have come from the underground of incarceration or addiction.

Through our work together over the last decade, helping other local businesses learn from this hiring practice, Fidalgo’s Underground Coffee is now the flagship enterprise of a growing Underground Employment model in the Pacific Northwest.

You can start your own fresh-roasted Underground Coffee subscription, or learn about how your business can use the Underground Employment model to join the movement: